also

[solarbird]

Yeah, I finally climbed my way back out of silver, I am gold again, yay. Go me; I am average. jfc that took 5eva. Until this season when I'm suddenly just 12-4 and rampaging.

Part of it is just being a better Widowmaker, obviously. I had a team today, at Volskaya, they started up with this 'uh are you sure you want to play widowmaker' and I was 'yes.' and they were 'are you ... any good?' and I was 'yes. but i'm even better when i'm not being harassed' and they were apologetic but still nervous until I killed half the enemy team on their first push pretty much by myself at which point suddenly they were SCREAMING - seriously, OH MY GOD - and at the end, after enemy team had captured nothing, i was all "14 kills, 3 objective; both are gold" and they were "WE KNOW THANK YOU WE'RE SO SORRY."

(I'd bailed their Reinhardt out of Mei's clutches a couple of times, and a couple of other people out of enemy Pharah's grip a few times too.)

Then on offence I became that Pharah and killed five of the six and we won on our first push. Best part of that was being in progress of taking the point while they were still trying to figure out whether to regroup and flank and I was like 'hey, guys, I'm already there' at which point they had the sense to charge (with more SCREAMING. it was hilarious) and just short of begging me to join their team.

I've been on plenty of teams that steamrolled, and have been a contributor to that often enough. But I'm not sure I've been so completely and obviously the actual steamroller. But today? I was.

But even with shit like that, honestly I think the biggest thing might be just not playing much quickplay anymore. Warm up in deathmatch then dive in. Even in junky levels where I play, the rhythm is so different, and part of it I think is just getting used to that.

Anyway, hi gold, been a while. Let's see if I can get used to it.

Comments

[kathmandu]

"I finally climbed my way back out of silver, I am gold again, yay. Go me; I am average."

Gold is *average*? What kind of a system is this? I was expecting gold to mean superlative, especially with how often you talk about golding and 'I did all the kills' or 'I practically won single-handed' in the same recounting.

[solarbird]

Yeh, in terms of competitive ranking, gold is average. The ranks are bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, grand master. But the average rank across all competitive players is gold.

(Overwatch has a lot of game modes. I also have a ranking in quickplay; judging from player skill, I think I rank meaningfully higher in quickplay than I do in comp. Not sure, though, and have no way to tell. There's also competitive deathmatch, where I don't have a ranking yet, and some sort of deathmatch ffa ranking as well, which I can't see. There's also the whole set of capture-the-flag games and other stuff in Arcade; I don't even know how those work, I don't play them at all.)

BUT!

There's also in-single-game rankings. Within a single game of any kind, gold is the top level. You've got unranked, bronze, silver, and gold, in that order. So if you get the gold there, that means you were the best player at that thing - but only within that single game. And that's what I'm usually talking about when I'm talking about how a single game went.

So yeah. Gold means very different things depending upon where you are.